Bent Road - Lori Roy [42]
At the sound of another thud, Evie pulls away from Mama and points at the window. “It’s a Clark City man,” she says. “That’s what it is.” And then she whispers. “It’s Jack Mayer. He’s back and he’s looking for food. Maybe he’s even got Julianne with him.”
“Shut up, Evie,” Daniel says. “It’s not a Clark City man. And it’s not Jack Mayer. Shut up.”
As the weather has turned colder, the pond near the curve in Bent Road has shrunk, dried up like every other pond around. Every time Daniel passes it, he looks for the tips of Jack Mayer’s boots, thinking he might be lying at the bottom of that pond. Daniel has never seen him, and Ian says he won’t because Jack Mayer has to be alive since he’s the one who swiped Julianne Robison.
“Kids, please,” Mama says. “Stop your bickering.”
Aunt Ruth tucks Evie under her arm while Mama sidesteps toward the back door.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Mama says, but she’s inching toward the porch like she definitely thinks it’s something. “Evie, you stay here with Daniel and Ruth. I’ll go . . .”
“No, Mama.” Daniel walks around the table, tilts his head down and looks up at Mama from under his brow. “I’ll give a look-see.”
It’s what Dad would have said.
Stepping onto the porch, Daniel pulls the door closed behind him and exhales a frosted cloud. He yanks on the knob again, listening for the click that tells him the door is latched good and tight, and once he hears it, he thinks he should feel more like a man. Instead, he slouches and pulls up the collar of Dad’s flannel jacket because maybe whoever is stomping around their side yard will mistake Daniel for Dad. Mama says that by his next birthday, Daniel will be as tall as Dad. Keep eating Aunt Ruth’s good cooking, she says, and you’ll be as broad, too. He gives Aunt Ruth, Mama and Evie a thumbs-up sign through the window in the back door and walks across the screened-in porch. With the toes of his leather boots hanging over the first stair, he sees nothing or no one as far as the porch light reaches.
Ian had clipped out the latest story about Jack Mayer from page 3 of the Hays Chronicle, the shortest one yet, and one of many that didn’t make page 1. After nearly four months, police now believe Jack Mayer has either left the Palco area or has died of exposure. Authorities at the Clark City State Hospital declined to comment on Jack Mayer’s whereabouts, other than to say the hospital had successfully implemented new security measures. After Ian showed Daniel the article that he kept under his mattress along with a dozen others about Jack Mayer, he took Daniel out to the barn and showed him a wadded-up flannel blanket and empty tin can that were hidden behind three hay bales and an old wheelbarrow. Daniel kicked the can across the dirt floor. Ian stumbled after it, his right side lagging behind because he didn’t have on his new boots, picked it up, and placed it back with the blanket because he thought the tin can and blanket were proof positive that Jack Mayer was alive and well and living in the Bucher barn. “No need to make a crazy man mad,” Ian had said as he cleaned the brim of the can with his shirttail.
At the bottom of the stairs, Daniel tucks his bare hands under his arms, stomps his feet, and looking toward the barn, he wonders if Jack Mayer might just be hiding in there. Mama found the pie that Aunt Ruth baked for Father Flannery and nothing else has gone missing in the house except the last piece of Evie’s birthday cake, which Daniel knows Dad ate but won’t admit. Ian said their food disappeared all the time. He said Jack Mayer stole it right off their kitchen counter. He said Jack Mayer crawled through their windows every night and helped himself to corn muffins, sliced pork roast and ham and bean soup. Daniel asked Ian how he could be sure Jack Mayer was eating all that food with so many brothers living in the house. Ian had said that no man alive could eat like Jack Mayer because Jack Mayer is a mountain of a man.
Walking into the center of the gravel drive,